Pat Martin

[Fair Representation Act, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I was not going to interject, but one thing that my colleague from Edmonton said in his speech struck me and motivated me to get up. He said that Canada is lucky to have a functioning Parliament. I would remind him that Parliament is just barely functioning. The bill is perhaps a graphic illustration of how poorly our Parliament is functioning under the guidance of the Conservatives.

This legislation clearly needs more consultation. We have not arrived at a national consensus on which direction we should take. There was little consultation, and now we have no time to debate it in the House of Commons.

I remind my colleague, and I wonder if he shares my view, that consultation means more than just listening to someone's point of view. It means the reasonable accommodation of reasonable points of view brought to the table during that consultation. His government has not allowed one amendment to one single bill since the 41st Parliament began. How can the member call this a functioning Parliament?

[Fair Representation Act, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I recognize the expertise of my colleague from the Liberal Party in this matter and the contribution he has made in this subject matter in his many years in this House of Commons.

However, I would ask two questions.

First, I did not hear him speak to the point that reasonable people are reasonably disagreeing on this matter and that the bill has perhaps not matured. The bill has perhaps not reached its gestation, and imposing closure on it, truncating debate on such important subject matter, does not serve the democratic process well.

Also, I did not hear him comment on what I believe is the Trojan Horse effect of the bill, which is that while we are debating the allocation of seats and the distribution of seats, we are missing the point that the Conservatives are stripping away the funding for democracy, the per-vote federal contribution to the democratic process, in an attempt to annihilate the Liberal Party specifically. Their real goal here is to stamp out his party, not to reallocate seats throughout the country.

[Petitions, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by literally thousands of Canadians who call upon the House of Commons and Parliament to take note that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known.

The petitioners point out that more Canadians now die from asbestos than all industrial or occupational causes combined. Yet Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world.

The petitioners also criticize the fact that Canada spends millions of dollars subsidizing the asbestos industry and blocking international efforts to curb its use.

Therefore, these petitioners call upon Parliament to ban asbestos in all of its forms and institute a just transition program for asbestos workers and the communities they live in and to end all government subsidies of asbestos in Canada and abroad. They call upon Parliament to stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam convention.

[Aboriginal Affairs, December 12th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, convicted fraudster Bruce Carson was a key adviser to the Prime Minister until 2008, and he did not leave because he was fired. He left with $40 million to perpetrate an even greater fraud, starting two phony think tanks to take the stink off the oil sands.

However, his greatest scam was yet to come: using his Conservative connections to exploit the appalling living conditions on a first nations reserve. What kind of a man sees human tragedy as an opportunity to cheat people, and what kind of a government would give such power to such a horror of a human being?

Mulroney used to say that the boys have to make a living, but we thought we had closed the door on that sordid chapter of Canadian politics. It seems that history is repeating itself.

Contempt for Parliament, ignoring the rule of law and letting loathsome parasites try to fatten themselves on the third world conditions of first nations reserves are all things that lead us to the conclusion that the Conservatives are not fit to govern.

[Canadian Wheat Board, December 8th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, Justice Campbell also said that the minister will be held accountable for his disregard for the law. Now that the courts have ruled that Conservatives are in contempt of the rule of law, how can the Conservative-dominated Senate give approval and pass a bill that it knows will be struck down by the courts?

Conservatives are making a mockery of themselves even more than they usually do. I believe that they cannot pass the bill. Bill C-18 is toast in that respect. It will be overturned, and it is irresponsible and reckless to throw the entire rural prairie farm economy upside down and on its head when the 2012 crop year has to--

[Canadian Wheat Board, December 8th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Federal Court has ruled that our Minister of Agriculture is a scofflaw.

More serious than a gazebo in Muskoka or a search and rescue joyride or something, this minister's disregard for the law has serious consequences, because farmers need to know, before they put seed in the ground, how they will market their 20 million tonnes of grain this year. When that bill has been struck down by the courts, it will create pandemonium on the Prairies.

Will this minister agree now to put the brakes on Bill C-18, allow farmers to have their vote, and if they want to change the Canadian Wheat Board Act, do it with the mandate from the very producers who are subject to--

[Canadian Wheat Board, December 8th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Federal Court has ruled that the federal government's actions and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food 's conduct on Bill C-18, the Canadian Wheat Board Act were an affront to the rule of law.

The court accepted arguments from the applicants that the rule of law embodied the principle that law was supreme over officials of the government as well as over private individuals. It is worth recording some of the reasoning behind this ruling.

Under the rule of law, citizens have the right to come to the courts to enforce the law against the executive branch. And the courts have the right to review actions by the executive branch to determine whether they are in compliance with the law and, where warranted, to declare a government action unlawful. This right in the hands of the people is not a threat to democratic governance but its very assertion. Accordingly, the executive branch of government is not its own exclusive arbiter on whether it or its delegate is acting within the limits of the law. The detrimental consequences of the executive branch of government defining for itself...the scope of its lawful power have been revealed, often bloodily, in the tumult of history.

[Senate Reform Act, December 8th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, Canadians should remind us that we are broke. We borrow money every year just to make payroll, to pay our bills and to keep the Government of Canada running. We are in a severe deficit situation. We should be looking under every rock and turning over every stone to find efficiencies and ways to save money.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in the other chamber, not to augment, complement and enhance democracy but to sabotage and undermine democracy and to thwart the democratic will of this chamber.

A great deal of the money that we spend in the Senate is to fly senators around the world like a bunch of Harlem Globetrotters. Have members ever seen a parliamentary junket where every Senate position was not filled? We take a pass on most trips that we are offered. Senators never turn down a trip. They gallivant around the world like some high-flying globe-trotting emissary of Canada, which is of no material benefit or value to us. It is a waste of money. It is a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars that could be better spent enhancing our democracy instead of sabotaging it.

[Senate Reform Act, December 8th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, before I share one of the most appalling things that the Senate has done to date, which is the only time in Canadian history that we know the Senate has done this, I will tell the member a secret that not many people know. I used to be in favour of the Senate. I used to be about the only New Democrat in the country who was not in favour of abolishing it. I even sat with the current Conservative Prime Minister when he introduced the first bill to reform the Senate. Since then, I have realized how wrong I was and how right my party is.

What has turned me into an anti-Senate activist are the stunts that the Conservatives have pulled. Two bills that were passed democratically by this chamber were killed by the Senate. I wish the country could hear this. One is the climate change bill, the only environmental bill passed since 2006 when the Conservatives took power. It passed all stages in the House and was killed by the Senate without a single day of debate or a single witness being heard. The other bill that it arbitrarily, unilaterally killed without debate was the bill that would have made generic drugs available to Africa to fight the HIV-AIDS and tuberculosis pandemics.

Can members believe the bills that the Senate chose to intervene and squash with its undemocratic, unelected, obsolete vestige of colonialism? It is appalling.

[Senate Reform Act, December 8th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, the senators are wading into and are actively engaged in partisan politics. It offends me that they are allowed to be members of boards of directors. They are not only sabotaging bills that come through the House, such as the climate change bill, they are sitting on the boards of directors of the big oil companies and sabotaging the climate change bill.

How can a senator be allowed to sit on a board of directors when it is a clear conflict of interest for any of us to do it? Some senators sit on 10 or 12 boards. It is appalling. It is another good reason to abolish the Senate.